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On January 1, 1959, Fidel Castro and his bearded revolutionaries marched into Havana. Church bells rang across the island as Batista fled into exile. This January 1st marked the 67th anniversary of that revolution. Sixty-seven years of a system built on deception, imposed through violence, and sustained through repression. But now, for the first time .. MORE
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Education
A New York magazine article titled “Everyone Is Cheating Their Way Through College” made the rounds in mid-2025. I think about it often, and especially when I get targeted ads that are basically variations on “if you use our AI tool, you’ll be able to cheat without getting caught.” Suffice it to say it’s dispiriting. .. MORE
Economic Institutions
The recent removal of Nicolás Maduro from Venezuela’s presidency is a dramatic development after more than two decades of socialist experimentation under Hugo Chávez and Maduro, characterized by expropriation, macroeconomic mismanagement, and political repression. Although there is much uncertainty about the economic and political future of Venezuela, economics can offer some guidance—and warnings. One such .. MORE
Price Theory
This is the latest in our series of posts in our series on price theory problems with Professor Bryan Cutsinger. You can see all of Cutsinger’s problems and solutions by subscribing to his EconLog RSS feed. Share your proposed solutions in the comments. Professor Cutsinger will be present in the comments for the next couple .. MORE
#ReadWithMe
It is time to explore the principles on which human nature has been constructed and the social structures that are derived from behaviors embedded in the human genome. —Nicholas Wade, The Origin of Politics (46) Nicholas Wade is concerned that we are attempting to establish cultural norms and political structures that stray too far from .. MORE
Economic Theory
In any principles of economics class, students learn the difference between accounting profit and economic profit. Accounting profit, which is what one typically understands when discussing “profit,” is total revenue minus your monetary costs. It is what appears on the bottom line of an accounting statement as “profit.” Economic profit is a broader term. Recall .. MORE
Political Economy
On January 1, 1959, Fidel Castro and his bearded revolutionaries marched into Havana. Church bells rang across the island as Batista fled into exile. This January 1st marked the 67th anniversary of that revolution. Sixty-seven years of a system built on deception, imposed through violence, and sustained through repression. But now, for the first time .. MORE
Cross-country Comparisons
According to the IMF, America’s GDP per capita (in PPP terms) is 35.6% higher than in Canada. In a recent post, I pointed out that to the casual observer, Canadian living standards seem fairly close to those in the US, albeit slightly lower. In this post I’ll try to address the question of why the .. MORE
Economic Education
There is a Japanese anime entitled Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End. While anime has a justly-deserved reputation for being over-the-top and goofy, this particular series bucks the trend. The plot follows Frieren, an elven mage. Elves in this universe are incredibly long-lived; their typical lifespan reaches thousands of years long. Frieren was part of a party .. MORE
Economic Institutions
In times of crisis, we consider what can be done to return to a path of prosperity and wealth. However, there is a tendency to mistake the previous manifestations of economic success—the sectors and products that an economy has, in the past, successfully produced—for the more fundamental source of success. When, in 1947, Ludwig Erhard .. MORE
I am a lead pencil–the ordinary wooden pencil familiar to all boys and girls and adults who can read and write…. [From “I, Pencil”]
Snippet: What is the problem we wish to solve when we try to construct a rational economic order? On certain familiar assumptions the answer is simple enough. If we possess all the relevant information, if we can start out from a given system of preferences, and if we command complete knowledge of available means, the .. MORE
Fourth edition, published 1869. (This essay was first published in 1859.)
I must have been forty years old before reading Frederic Bastiat’s classic The Law. An anonymous person, to whom I shall eternally be in debt, mailed me an unsolicited copy. After reading the book I was convinced that a liberal-arts education without an encounter with Bastiat is incomplete. Reading Bastiat made me keenly aware of .. MORE
I expect an outcome more like Russia than Poland. Before Castro Batista was a pretty brutal, corrupt dictator and power was turned over by coup. They just dont have a positive history to fall back..
steve, January 6